In my opinion, the most difficult question on the midterm is Question 1. Although Question 1 is considered as the most basic fundamental computational skills that we need to master before talking about other more advanced calculus problem that demand more thinking or different kinds of thinking, the question took me 60 minutes in a 90 minutes’ exam. I thought that as long as I “knew how to do” the computation, I would be able to do them quickly in an exam but it turned out that i was wrong. My computational speed did not fit the requirement. For other questions, the ways of thinking them were already covered in assignments or other materials, which made the thinking itself not hard under an exam condition, and underneath all that thinking , is still, computational skills, that actually calculate the answers!
Tips:
- Mathematics learning does need practice! Do not think it is sufficient to just “know how to do it”. The fact that the level of education changes that I am not in high school anymore and I am now doing things that are cooler than just computation does not change a core factor of mathematics–computation.
- I should have managed my time more reasonably in the midterm and spent more time for the other questions.